Slutskaya's jumps may be big but she telegraphs, she lands poorly with no run out and little holding of that edge. She looks like a mess IMO.

I do agree that Sasha's jump problems stem from her lack of edge control. Oh if she worked on that... She does however have a nice proper position in the air, tight rotation, and she has lovely run-out.

I dont find that at all. Cohen flutzes, she leans in the air, and only on some of her jumps does she have nice run out, alot she lands stiff and with no flow too. The only jumps Irina lands with no flow on a good day is her triple lutz, the rest have good flow out, and her form in the air and rythym is better then Cohen's as well, and she actualy takes off with proper edges unlike Cohen.

Well if you're calling Cohen's Flutz then you have to call Irina's 'Lip which pretty much leaves them even on that count. I think in terms of edge quality, they're pretty evenly matched on the take off edges of the Toe, Sal and Loop. Cohen i gues gets dinged a little for her wobbly Flip edge which is the same as her wobbly flutz entrance. The Double axel is a tough call because they both have good double axels but in terms of edge quality - Irina's landing edge is not often the best on this jump but the height and diffuclty of transitions into this jump i think gives her a big nod.

While Irina has monster jumps in terms of height - her in-air position doesn't come close to Cohen's who hits a nice tight backspin position with pointed toes in the air - Irina can sometimes be a bit loose and sloppy in the air "muscling" the jump through the height more than in-air technique.

Both have their fair share of landing issues - Cohen holding the landing (but when she does she has good flow and run out) and Slutskaya does often come to a dead stop, not just on her Lutz but on all of her combinations. Her loop, which is supposedly her strongest jump often lands at a dead stop and on her 'Lip she has a tendancy to land on the inside edge first.

Irina has played around with some 'Tano jumps which maybe gives her something Cohen hasn't since she hasn't tried 'Tano jumps or adding transitions to her jumps like Irina's difficult SP Double Axel.

I think i would give Irina the nod in terms of jumps (if she lands them!) but i don't think the gap is as wide as some would argue.

Mathman, if you are going to go just by jumps to give out the medals and final placings you should also add on the short program jumping totals, and then the combined jumping totals from both short and long, no?

The 2006 Great Olympic Jump-off. Here's the top ten, in two groups of five.

Short program (total scores, including GOEs, for the three jumping passes):

Same as in 1998, when she killed everyone in the Goodwill Games at the beginning of the season.

You mean the 2001-02 Goodwill Games in Australia?

1998 Goodwill Games was in summer 1998 in NY, months after the Olympics -- some skaters actually introduced new programs they intended to use in the 1998-99 season.

M. Kwan dominated that event, winning both programs easily and probably with straight 1st-place ordinals. 1998 U.S. junior champion S. Hughes skated an exhibition of her long program and landed more triples than most of the competitors.

Slutskaya was struggling with her jumps that summer and not attempting lutzes. I really enjoyed her new Autumn Leaves SP though, with visibly improved spirals and musical expression between February and March and August of '98. I was amused that to see her as one of the slower, more expressive skaters in the field for a change.

Thanks, woohoo a medal for Canada. That triple-triple in the short actually payed off for Meissner after all(of course in the real competition it seemed to have little impact considering she scored lower then her short at Worlds without the triple-triple).

"M. Kwan's" performance of the Rachmaninov short program in that event took permanent possession of my heart and single-handedly made me a figure skating fan.

Originally Posted by Slutskayafan

That triple-triple in the short actually payed off for Meissner after all...

It does stand out (also Gedevanishvili's), when you break down the scores.

I think we will see more and more skaters attempt a triple/triple in the short program. In the long, everyone does pretty much the same jumps if they can. If they can't do a triple/triple they can almost make up the difference with a triple/double/double.

But for the short program there still seems to be a "play-it-safe" mental block hanging over the skaters from the 6.0 era. The old wisdom was, "you can't win the contest in the short, but you can lose it."

That was true for ordinals, but in CoP judging every point counts equally. There is no reason not to go for the extra triple in the short if you can.

(CoP question: In the SP, if you fall on the second jump of your combination, but complete the revolutions, does that count as satisfying the jump combination requirement?)

(CoP question: In the SP, if you fall on the second jump of your combination, but complete the revolutions, does that count as satisfying the jump combination requirement?)

Yes. It's -2 on the GOE for a fall on the second jump. (If there were also problems with the first jump, the final GOE could be -3; if the first jump and everything except the landing of the second were excellent, the final GOE could be -1. Also there would be an additional 1.00 fall deduction off the total score.)

On the other hand, if you fall on the first jump, get up, and do a second jump, you'll get no credit for the second one.